The court reinstated bioinformatician Gelfand, who was dismissed from the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Scientist Mikhail Gelfand won a lawsuit against the management of the Institute for Information Transmission Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which fired him. Gelfand must be reinstated and paid back the lost income. The bioinformatician himself stated that the institute where he worked for a quarter of a century has already been destroyed by the administration. At the same time, he is ready to help restore the IPRI if “some wonderful, bright person” comes to the post of director.

The Tushinsky District Court of Moscow declared illegal the dismissal of bioinformatician and co-founder of the Dissernet project Mikhail Gelfand from the post of chief researcher at the Institute of Information Transmission Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

As RTVi reports with reference to the court decision, ~Gelfand should be reinstated in his previous position. The scientist will be paid an amount equal to the lost earnings during forced absence in the amount of 522 thousand rubles.~

In addition, the court decided to pay Gelfand 20 thousand rubles in compensation for moral damage.

The court found that the management of the IPPI committed violations when dismissing the scientist: in particular, he received two different notices of dismissal, and the order generally mentioned a third one.

“I will help”

In a conversation with Gazeta.Ru, Gelfand confirmed that the court decided to reinstate him to his post at the IPPI. He also indicated that the institute could still appeal.

“But they will reinstate me because they will also lose the appeal. Well, then let's see how long it takes. So in this sense, I have quite optimistic expectations. The more meaningful question is what to do about it next? This does not depend on me, but again on the administration,” he noted.

Gelfand recalled that the administration at the institute had already changed; the deputy directors who fired him no longer work there. And new employees “have a chance to pretend that they have nothing to do with it and discuss some meaningful things.”

“But, unfortunately, the activities of the previous administration and [нынешней]and the acting director, who still performs them, led to the fact that the institute suffered greatly. And the question of whether it is possible to try to restore something meaningful from these ruins is not very obvious. Entire directions left the institute, including people with whom we worked closely and did the same science,” the scientist stated.

Gelfand emphasized that if the post of director is taken by “some wonderful, bright person,” then he will “help him.”

“In fact, by and large, a tragedy occurred because it is a very strong, very good institution with a very long history. My father worked there almost from the day it was founded, and I worked there for a quarter of a century. An institute with amazing, completely human relationships. In addition to the science that was being done there, it was also very comfortable to work there precisely in the sense of human relations both between colleagues and, say, with the administrative apparatus. The institute was destroyed. And this is very unfortunate. And the names of the people who did this are known. When Maxim Valeryevich Fedorov was sent to us in August, I immediately said that it would not be good. I turned out to be right, and this is not the kind of rightness that makes you happy,” the bioinformatician concluded.

Dismissal of a scientist

Gelfand was dismissed on May 15, 2024 under Article 288 of the Labor Code – dismissal of employees working part-time in the event of hiring another employee for whom this position will be the main one. He himself said that this happened after a meeting of the commission with the scientific council of the institute, at which a number of employees, including himself, criticized the actions of the institute. O. director and his deputies.

“I am far from the first person to quit or be fired in the last few months. Many deputy directors, heads of laboratories, key administrative specialists, the chairman of the scientific council, and the scientific secretary have left us. Now me. This is a consequence of the systematic purge carried out by the new administration. The new administration, having arrived at the institute, simply began to systematically change the main, key employees, especially in administrative positions, but also in scientific ones. Actually, this was told to me in plain text two months ago, when the Deputy Director for Research, Professor [Юрий] Kostyukevich simply came to my room at Skoltech, where we both work, and offered to resign of my own free will, because the management could not work with me,” noted Gelfand.

Turbulence in the IIPP began in July 2023, when Maxim Fedorov was appointed as the new head of the institute. The Ministry of Education notified and… O. director Andrei Sobolevsky about termination of his employment contract without specifying the reasons. This decision caused dissatisfaction, and in February the team of the IITP RAS held a conference at which they criticized the actions of the new government. Amid the conflict, many researchers left the institute.

Dissernet was founded by Gelfand together with physicists Andrei Rostovtsev and Andrei Zayakin, as well as journalist Sergei Parkhomenko. An online community organized on a voluntary basis identifies plagiarism in scientific papers.